The Players Club (1998)
(On TV, May 2021) Sure, you say, we’ve got plenty of movie male fantasies of belonging to organized crime, living large, sleeping around, managing the best local strip club and always staying one step ahead of the law — but what about the female viewpoint on that fantasy? And by that, I don’t mean the easy crutch of gender-swapping protagonist so that there are gangster girls with guns — I mean what if you had a female look at that bling-bling fantasy? Now, before going any further, let’s acknowledge the obvious limits of The Players Club in representing the female viewpoint: this is a film written and directed by Ice Cube. It’s not going to be particularly authentic nor all that credible. But still — for late-1990s black cinema, The Players Club still earns some distinction, and it’s amusingly stuck at a crossroad between being socially conscious, yet giving viewers the glitz they’re expecting. Much of the story revolves around a young woman who gets seduced into a seedier, more lucrative life — except that she’s asked to strip rather than deal drugs. Much of the film’s structure will be instantly familiar — the appeal of fast money, the grander-than-life figures at the periphery of the protagonist and the progressive descent of the characters into darker material until they reach a point where they either retreat or die. This protagonist ultimately makes the smart choice (well, helped along by the strip club burning to the ground) but otherwise The Players Club is determined to present a distaff perspective on familiar material. That’s what still makes it distinctive twenty-five years later — but let’s say that a true female perspective on the same story elements would be a very different film. But Ice Cube doesn’t do all that badly — some material still packs a punch, and for a film apparently modelled heavily on Showgirls, The Players Club hits most of its intended marks. The cast isn’t to be missed either — Sure, LisaRaye and Monica Calhoun look terrific, but then there’s Bernie Mac, Ice Cube and smaller blink-and-you’ll-miss-them roles for Jamie Foxx, Terrence Howard, Faizon Love and Michael Clarke Duncan. It has aged rather well, all things considered, even in an era not quite so enamoured of the gangster lifestyle or its equivalents.
